My writing group friend, Judy, died early this year from a brain bleed out caused by her glioblastoma brain cancer. Her death was unexpected. She was going to have a brain map done to prepare for the next step in healing, but the illness and her brain wore out first. We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or to visit in the last weeks. My flu virus stole our last moments. We emailed instead, each cyber note mentioning love. Love seemed to be her last language:
I will cherish the love sent to me and our family by your caring and love.
I wish I could have thanked you in person. Your love and caring spreads wide.
Love, Judy
Thank you for all the love you spread. May you have a wonderful holiday filled with joy and a special time with family and love ones. You are the “tops!” Looking forward to our next get together. I cherish you.
Judy
I wanted to see her and catch once more the slight smile on her sweet, ageless face. Judy stayed young and vibrant in her own way right to the end. Age has its stereotypes: short grey-lavender hair and elasticized-waist pants, but Judy’s wore a pale blonde pageboy and rocked some serious jeans.
She wrote memoir and screen plays, but also occasional poems. Who writes tender visual pieces at 80? Judy did. She wrote about old apartments, being a flight attendant, dogs she loved, or the nun who stole her chance of finding God in a particular denominational form. And of course, her first and successive years without her mother. For this she is one of my heroes, a motherless girl who found her way to be a girl, a wife, a mother, and a woman without her mother walking beside her. Each of her pieces is a treasure, a golden nugget made all the more precious because of her willingness to hear the writing group’s reactions and incorporate them—immediately. She scribbled our suggestions down as we said them, all of us sitting around the dining room table with her writing in front of us. She trusted us that much.
We met at each other’s homes. At least twice we met at Judy’s home, a lovely cottage with photos of her in theatrical presentations, her children, her grandchildren, and her beloved Gil. She would set out china teacups with little cookies she baked, and I was swept into an era that honored gentler things. Once she emailed us to say she was babysitting a little white pup. She wanted us to be certain we understood the dog was an honored guest, too, so please accept him as best as you can. I can’t imagine Judy rejecting anyone, much less a little white pooch. I think he sat between us on the sofa and we both petted him throughout the meeting.
I want to believe that Judy will be with us the next time we meet, that she will bring some little cookies and will ask us what we think about her last piece. I want to tell her again how great she looks in those jeans and see that sweet hint of a smile. “You paved a road for me, Judy,” I want to say. “You grew older your own beautiful way.” Heaven seems a little closer, a little more doable because she slipped away first, graciously and predictably, without making too much trouble for anyone right to the end.
I want to believe we will be sitting together with some little white pup between us, laughing at life and how all the cruelest things, all the losses, couldn’t hold us back from our share of its joys.
God bless you, sweet Judy.
I will always love you and your sweet spirit.